A baseball catcher at virtually every level of play when catching behind home plate wears conventional protective equipment, such as leg guards, a chest protector and a catcher's mask. Typically the catcher's mask includes a rigid frame carrying internal facial padding with the frame having a relatively narrow viewing slot. A horizontal resilient strap and a vertical resilient strap normally retain the catcher's mask upon the head of a catcher who also normally wears a baseball cap or a more rigid batter's helmet in conjunction with the catcher's mask. The rigid batter's helmet offers a degree of protection, but the softer cloth baseball cap does not.
A conventional catcher's mask of the type just described has many advantages, most importantly being the overall protection afforded a catcher's face. Such protection is, however, limited generally to the forward facial portion of the catcher's head, but not the crown, back, or opposite sides in the area of the catcher's ears. Such protection is highly desirable, as evidenced by the fact that catchers have been struck at the sides and rear of their heads by bats of "over-swinging" batters. Conventional catcher's masks are also relatively heavy and vision is quite poor, particularly lateral or sidewise vision. Furthermore, a catcher normally discards both his mask and batter's helmet/baseball cap when attempting to catch a "pop" fly in the area of home plate, and the mask and the batter's helmet/baseball cap drop to the ground at different locations. The catcher does not know exactly the position of the "pop" fly, and while he may remember the position of his mask, he may not necessarily also remember the position upon the ground of his discarded batter's helmet/baseball cap. Therefore, it is not unusual for a catcher while locating, framing and moving toward a "pop" fly to step upon one or more of the latter discarded items which not only might prevent the "pop" fly from being caught| but also can cause physical damage (ankle turns/sprains) to the catcher.